Working Life

Thank you, Greece voters.

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As I wrote the other day, an anti-Trans Pacific Partnership rally was set for today to confront the negotiators for this odious deal–a deal that contradicts the president’s own rhetoric to combat inequality. As much of the news was about the approaching snow (as aside: when did New Yorkers become such a soft, coddled bunch to go into full panic mode over a little blizzard?), a hardy group of activists and good people stood outside the Sheraton New York (7th Avenue and 53rd), where the negotiators were meeting, to denounce this travesty. A few pics.

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It just gets worse for workers.

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It’s pretty simple: you can’t advance a progressive agenda, or even one you call “liberal”, that claims to want to combat inequality AND go all out to ram through the Trans Pacific Partnership using the odious “Fast track” authority. Here are the contradictions.

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Ah, the seasons turn from summer to winter to spring…predictable. And just like the seasons we can count on one almost predictable fact: no one of consequences will go to jail for the robbery of the economy, the obliteration of millions of jobs and trillions of dollars of wealth. Nope, slap on the wrist. Every. Time. And, ladies and gents, the next example: S&P.

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In the midst of the Greek chorus demanding that everyone salute in awe and reverence to the tax proposals set to be unveiled in stage-managed “don’t actually look behind the curtain” fashion, it’s worth a pause to consider what these ideas mean in the big picture of class warfare and the crumbling of the country: meek stuff, clearly driven by the very Democratic/liberal pollsters who got the country into the mess in the first place by being cowards, a bit discriminatory and just long-term…bleh…

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There is little doubt that if Martin Luther King Jr. was alive today–and he would be 85 years old–he would be at the forefront of decrying the class warfare that has reached levels that even he could not have imagined during his short lifetime. He once said that what we “are saying that something is wrong … with capitalism…. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Call it what you may, call it democracy, or call it democratic socialism, but there must be a better distribution of wealth within this country for all of God’s children.”

And he would have woken up to this startling fact: the richest 1% of people throughout the globe control 48% of the planet’s wealth, leaving the other 52% for the other 99% of humanity.

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Sometimes, it’s hard to connect the dots between things that happened twenty years ago–because we don’t teach real history in schools and Crazy Birds is more popular than reading a book. So, people who are correctly suspicious/opposed to the Trans-Pacific Partnership don’t necessarily get the connection to the phrase “fast track” and don’t remember NAFTA which passed, thanks to Bill Clinton, back in 1993 (it came into force January 1994). So, Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch lends a hand today with a really great piece of analysis.

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Not that this should be entirely shocking but this should end the debate about how is getting fleeced and who carries the burden in society. And it’s useful to have this handy to dispatch to the usual class warfare deniers.

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Ok one victory for the good guys…

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Oh, so, the Democrats have awakened. Now, it’s the “middle-class” that is in vogue because somehow the campaign to lift people out of poverty via a hike in the minimum wage was a drag on Democrats politically (stupid argument, but a different story). It’s time for tax cuts to be paid for a little by Wall Street.

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Over the years, the Democratic opposition in the House to so-called “free trade” has grown, with more members opposed to so-called “free trade” than say back in the 1990s; the Senate has continued to be a disaster when it comes to building opposition to trade deals–basically, if you can’t stop it in the House, it’s […]

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Ok, so, Bernie Sanders was more judicious in his demand to the Obama Administration that he have access to a full draft of the current Trans-Pacific Partnership deal. Still, this is extremely important because it is the very secrecy about trade deals–going back decades–that goes to the heart of our ability, as citizens, to function in a democratic society.

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A relatively short diary for now. Many of us have been horrified–if not surprised–by the unhinged venom that has spilled out of the mouth of the head of the police union in NYC. To me, as I wrote previously, there has been a failure of the labor movement to confront his bile. So, I discussed this in an op-ed today in the NY Daily News.

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If Bernie Sanders runs, personally, I’ll be behind him 100 percent. And that decision is coming soon.

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There is an idiotic article now up on a traditional national media’s organization website about Bernie Sanders that is such a piece of shit (stupid, predictable, dishonest) that I was compelled to offer a real, in-depth discussion with Sanders that took place just two days ago. It’s on Iowa Press, a local Iowan show–it’s concrete, lengthy, substantive.

Asked about running for president Bernie Sanders says: “…I want to ascertain is whether or not there is the support to say government has got to start working for ordinary people and not just for billionaires.”

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